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New Membership Directory!
Rhode Island Genealogical Society 2009 Roster & Research Listing
M: $6.00 (includes tax & postage)

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Richard Bowen (1594?-1675) of Rehoboth, Massachusetts and His Descendants
Volume 1 —Generations 1-3
Hope, RI: Rhode Island Genealogical Society, 2011
353 + xii pages, hard cover, library binding, illustrated, bibliography, index of names.
ISBN 978-0-615-49315-2.
NM: $39.00   M: $35.00

Rhode Island Genealogical Society is pleased to announce the publication of the first volume of a new book, Richard Bowen (1594?-1675) of Rehoboth, Massachusetts and His Descendants, by William B, Saxbe, Jr., CG, FASG. This volume covers the first three generations of this large family in meticulous Register format. Volumes 2 (the fourth generation) and 3 (the fifth) are planned for subsequent publication. The entire print run has been generously donated by the author to RIGS.

The Bowen family has caused endless headaches for genealogical researchers. There have been so very many Bowens—and so many people of the same first and last name—that it is often hard to sort out one's own ancestors. As the early generations settled on the Massachusetts Bay/Rhode Island border, which was adjusted several times, locating the original records adds another degree of difficulty. This book will prove indispensable to researchers facing these problems.

Many features make this book a model for future genealogical writing. The exhaustive research brings together original records and the existing body of Bowen literature. Dr. Saxbe writes not merely competently but with grace and perspective on his subject. The clarity of the layout helps the reader to remember where he or she is in the family story. The index of names and places, always critically important for genealogists, is very well laid out and easy to use.

Unlike many compiled genealogies, the text is not an endless list of dates and places of births, marriages, and deaths. The author sets the scene for each generation's challenges with clear historical material. The text emphasizes the impact of King Philip's War on the family—which lost several members to violence—and on the next few decades of New England settlements.

Tucked inside this three-generation Bowen family history are full five-generation histories of the families of Robert1 Wheaton, Robert1 Fuller, and George1 Kendrick, each of whom married a daughter of Richard1 Bowen. This unveils the size and complexity of a colonial family's female lines--which are skipped over in many family histories. For example, one of Richard1 Bowen's granddaughters was an ancestor of presidents of both Dartmouth and Harvard Colleges. By following female lines, much information was also turned up on descendants of other Rehoboth families, including Blanding, Bliss, Butterworth, Carpenter, Mann, Mason, Palmer, Read, Robinson, and Wilmarth.

William B. Saxbe, Jr., a Certified Genealogist since 1981, is a graduate of Amherst College, Harvard Medical School, and Harvard School of Public Health. He was elected a Fellow of the American Society of Genealogists in 1997 and presently serves as its vice-president. His writings on the Bowen family, including the delightful "Twenty-One Jabez Bowens," are familiar to readers of Rhode Island Roots. Dr. Saxbe's book Johann Genning (1818-1898) and His Descendants: A Toledo Family won the 1991 NGS Award for Excellence in Genealogy and Family History. He comes by his interest in the Bowen family naturally, as both his parents descend from Richard¹ Bowen.

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1797 The Year the Elephant Visited Providence
by Wayne G. Tillinghast
Hope RI: Rhode Island Genealogical Society, 2010
Soft cover, 248 pages, 6 x 9 inches, illustrated, appendices, bibliography, and index. ISBN 978-0-9827665-0-7.
$19.95 (R.I. residents add 7% state tax) plus $4.50 S&H. The book may also be ordered  from RIGS Books, P.O. Box 211, Hope RI 02831 .

From this entertaining tale of life in Providence during the year 1797, we discover the varied interests and concerns of the people who lived there at that time. They engaged in a joyous and lengthy celebration of President John Adams and a subsequent repeated celebration of the anniversary of American Independence. From the detailed offerings of the various merchants and tradesmen we are apprised of what was sought in the marketplace. We become aware of the nature of goods exported and imported in the foreign maritime trade as well as the identity of the various merchants, sea captains, and vessel-owners.

We learn something of the local politics of the time, including some of the amusing opinions and observations expressed by inhabitants. 1797 was the year that the first elephant in American visited Providence. One woman's bizarre attempts at suicide, another's frustration at her lover's reluctance to wed, and the improbable trail of havoc left by a mad dog are but a few of the many stories. The most significant event treated in this account is the tragic yellow fever epidemic that claimed the lives of a number of residents and decimated several families. Detailed is the nature of the illness, the identity of the victims, the doctors who treated them, the reaction of public officials in their efforts to curtail the spread of the disease, and the differing opinions as to the genesis and containment of yellow fever.

Wayne G. Tillinghast is the author of The Tillinghasts in America, The First Four Generations for which he received the prestigious Donald Lines Jacobus Award from the American Society of Genealogists, in recognition of sound scholarship in genealogical writing. He has also authored several legal, historical, and genealogical articles, and was the recipient of the Rhode Island Genealogical Society's Robert M. Sherman Fellowship for his article "The Three Captains Joseph Tillinghast of Providence." An honor graduate and former adjunct professor of the University of Connecticut Law School, he is a practicing trial lawyer in Connecticut. He resides at Groton Long Point, Connecticut, with his wife Roslind.

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Newport, Rhode Island Colonial
Burial Grounds
by RIGS members John Eylers Sterling, Barbara J. Austin, and Letty Champion; ed. by Cherry Fletcher Bamberg, FASG.
Book Only: NM: $35.00   M: $31.00
DVDs Only: NM: $29.00   M: $26.00
Book & DVDs: NM: $59.00   M: $49.00

The Rhode Island Genealogical Society is pleased to announce its Special Publication No. 10. Researchers who have used the Rhode Island Historic Cemetery Database over the last twenty years or any of the cemetery books inspired by it can rejoice over this new publication. Although Newport was the most important city in colonial Rhode Island, its early burial grounds have never previously been comprehensively transcribed in a single, beautifully illustrated book. For the first time all the gravestones in Newport's colonial burial grounds have been carefully photographed and compared with previous transcriptions, resulting in the correction of over 1,200 errors. These photographs also allowed the authors to determine how many gravestones have been damaged or lost and to reconnect headstones and footstones mysteriously separated over the centuries.

Introductory material shows why the landscape of Newport burial grounds differs so markedly from the rest of the colony. The history of each burial ground precedes the gravestone data which is presented, as in previous books, in the Association for Gravestone Studies format. This data is supplemented with details from diaries and newspapers as available. Appendices present information on gravestones removed from the burial grounds, broken or damaged stones, cause of death, and heraldic carvings. There are indexes for gravestones and maiden names on gravestones.

What sets this publication apart from anything else in the field is the optional companion set of two DVDs with 8,500 high-resolution, high quality photographs of the gravestones. Although the book can be enjoyed on its own, many readers will want to see for themselves what is being described, especially when the stone marks the grave of their own ancestor. Students of gravestone carving will revel in the opportunity to see such an overwhelming number of stones by some of the finest carvers in colonial America.

Like our other publications, Newport Colonial Burial Grounds is priced well below most small-run genealogical books. Our intention is to make the material available to as many readers as possible. Your purchase will support future publications.

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Thomas Clemence of Providence, Rhode Island and his descendants to the year 2007
by Jane Fletcher Fiske
Hard cover, 433 pages, 2007.
NM: $35.00   M: $31.00

This book was commissioned by the late Roberta Stokes Smith in 2001 and funded by the Dean C. and Roberta Smith Foundation, which is donating the full print run (250 copies) to RIGS.

This book covers all that can be learned of the immigrant Thomas Clemence who arrived in Providence ca. 1644, roughly the same time as Pardon Tillinghast. Readers who enjoyed Tillinghasts in America, The First Four Generations by Wayne G. Tillinghast will welcome the patient exploration of the Clemence family at that time in Rhode Island history. The discussion of Thomas Clemence's English background and possible connections with other settlers is particularly fascinating. The book does not stop with the very early generations but includes accounts of Thomas Clemence's descendants in the male line to the twelfth generation, right down to the present day. Marriages for Clemence daughters are given, with information about children, but the married names are not carried forward. Descendants include many families still in the Providence area, as well as concentrations in Kansas, Maryland, and elsewhere in the United States.

Woven into the genealogy of this family is the story of America. Although well educated, early Clemence settlers were principally farmers. In Rhode Island, as time progressed, many descendants left farming to work in the textile mills, to jewelry and clockwork manufacturing, and to  transportation (such as Providence streetcars), leading to several engineers and airline pilots in more recent generations. Among more unusual accomplishments by family members are those of an astronomer (whose picture with Albert Einstein appears in the book), a deputy director of the U.S. Bureau of the Census, a Radio City Music Hall Rockette, a Wellesley Economics Professor, and a woman watchmaker. We follow the generations through King Philip's War to the Revolution, the Civil War, and twentieth century conflicts.

Illustrations include numerous photographs of ancient documents, people, and gravestones, as well as genealogical charts and maps. There is an every-name index.
 

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Rhode Island Roots, 1975 to 2004
CD, 2007
SOLD OUT

This CD replaces the previous one which contained issues only to the year 2000. Redesigned and easier to use, it makes Rhode Island Roots, the quarterly journal of the Rhode Island Genealogical Society, available to all researchers.
 

Diaries of J. Irving Maxson, 1898-1923
by Jane Hoxie Maxson; ed. by Cherry Fletcher Bamberg, FASG
Soft cover, 368 pp., 2009
$19.95

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The Tillinghasts in America,
The First Four Generations
by Wayne G. Tillinghast
Hard cover, 788 pp., 2006.
NM: $39.00   M: $35.00
Winner of 2008 Donald Lines Jacobus Award, American Society of Genealogists
(See Press Release)

Researchers of early Rhode Island genealogy can rejoice over this rich new source of genealogical information on the Tillinghast family. Pardon Tillinghast, his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren played major roles in the life of the colony and young state. Since they married into all of the leading families of Rhode Island, this genealogy reads like a Who's Who of colonial Providence. The author, an eleventh generation descendant of Elder Pardon, traces both male and female lines with abundant detail and meticulous documentation. Families in Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts are also studied in depth.

Based on patient archival research, the book includes far more than names and dates. Through this one family we see people's reactions to various events in Rhode Island history, including the burning of the Gaspee, the Revolution, religious controversies, the maritime trade, the slave trade, the issuance of paper money, inoculation, containment of smallpox and yellow fever, business successes and failures, and financial and romantic heartaches.

The genealogical detective work, especially on the male lines, is superb. A number of longstanding confusions between people of the same name are carefully resolved. Knotty genealogical problems—ones that baffled even the people who experienced them firsthand—are clearly explained. The extensive index is a delight to use.

Henry Hoff, reviewing this book in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register (January 2007), commented: "Any genealogist planning to write a book – or even just an article – on a Rhode Island family should look at this work as a model."
 

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Historical Cemeteries of South Kingstown,
Rhode Island
by John E. Sterling and James L. Wheaton, IV, ed. by Cherry Fletcher Bamberg
Hard cover, 653 pp., 2004.
NM: $39.00   M: $35.00

A comprehensive recording in the Association for Gravestone Studies format of more than two hundred cemeteries and information on fifty more that are now missing, this massive work is illustrated with hundreds of sketches of fieldstones and a wealth of photographs. Gravestone information is supplemented by entries from "Nailer Tom" Hazard's diary and Daniel Stedman's journal that enrich our understanding of the person buried under the gravestone. Stedman noted, for example, the death of Daniel R. Clarke, who drowned at the age of 25 in 1855: "Drowned Daniel Ransome Clarke in the Saltpond oversot having a heavy Load of fish and the wind bloed very hard.

Writing in the Association for Gravestone Studies Quarterly (Spring 2005) Vincent Luti, author of Mallet and Chisel, Gravestone Carvers of Newport, Rhode Island in the 18th Century, notes that: "Anyone, any town, any state doing cemetery/gravestone documentation should own this model book. Genealogists of Rhode Island Plantations will surely add it to their libraries. Historical societies, genealogy centers, and research institutes will be more serviceable with this exemplary book."
 

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North Burial Ground Providence, Rhode Island
Old Section 1700-1848
by John E. Sterling
Hard cover, 480 pp., 2001.
NM: $39.00  M: $31.00

John Sterling, the dean of Rhode Island gravestone studies, not only recorded thousands of inscriptions in the oldest cemetery in Providence, but also detailed its history and recreated lots within the cemetery by painstaking research into the records. The Association for Gravestone Studies format provides an abstract of the biographical information on the stone, data about the gravestone itself (material, condition, location). The natural order makes it easy to identify family groups within the cemetery. Introduction, richly illustrated with photographs and maps, every name index, maiden name index.
 

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Graveyards of North Kingstown, Rhode Island
by Althea H. McAleer, Beatrix Hoffius, and Deby J. Nunes
Soft cover, 350 pp., 1992.
NM: $19.95   M: $17.95

A recording of over one hundred forty burial grounds with many photos and maps. The authors provide directions and a small map to guide researchers to each cemetery. A beautiful map of the entire town with locations of cemeteries marked in red is folded into an envelope inside the back cover. Information from previous transcriptions supplements the gravestones found by the authors. Notes provide further information about the history of individual burial grounds and the people buried in them. Introduction, indexed.
 

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Elm Grove Cemetery of North Kingstown,
Rhode Island
by Althea H. McAleer
Hard cover, 392 pp., 2001.
NM: $35.00   M: $27.00

The sequel to Graveyards of North Kingstown, Rhode Island, this book offers a transcription of the nearly ten thousand gravestones in North Kingstown Historic Cemetery 26 in the Association for Gravestone Studies format. Although Elm Grove Cemetery was opened in the nineteenth century, it contains many earlier burials as families moved graves from small burial grounds to this garden cemetery. Introduction, photographs, indexes.
 

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Elder John Gorton & the Six Principle Baptist
Church of East Greenwich, Rhode Island
by Cherry Fletcher Bamberg
Hard cover, 630 pp., 2001.
NM: $36.00   M: $29.00

John Gorton was elder of the Six Principle Church of East Greenwich from 1753 to his death in 1792, and his papers, now at Rhode Island Historical Society, document the life of the church and the many Rhode Islanders who used its services for baptism, marriage, and burial. His records include the names of luminaries like Nathaniel Greene and Catharine Littlefield, as well as sailors, farmers, tradesmen, Indians, slaves, and black and white soldiers in the Revolution. Gorton preached not only to the solid citizens of Kent County but also to people with a full range of human failings: men who abandoned their wives, pregnant brides, deserters, counterfeiters, and even an insane murderer. Footnotes provide hundreds of carefully researched "mini-biographies" of people mentioned. Introduction, index, illustrations.
 

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Daniel Stedman's Journal, 1826-1859
transcribed by Henry Clay Oatley, Jr., ed. by Cherry Fletcher Bamberg
Soft cover, 464 pp., 2003.
NM: $37.00   M: $32.00

Thirty-four years in the life of a farmer, justice of the peace, and shoemaker from South Kingstown are recorded in his journal and transcribed by Henry Oatley in whose family the journal descended. Daniel Stedman, a neighbor of "Nailer Tom" Hazard, another famous diarist of South Kingstown, recorded the events of his daily life during Rhode Island's transition from an agricultural society to an industrial one. Beyond his family life we follow the emergence of the movements promoting temperance and abolition, hear of the circus—complete with lions, tigers, and elephants—coming to Wakefield, and see the first trickle of Irish immigrants into the community. Blacks and Indians are frequently mentioned. Stedman recorded hundreds of deaths, including a number of suicides. Methods commonly included hanging and cutting one's throat with a razor (among men) and jumping down the family well (among women). A genealogical appendix helps identify members of Daniel's family who are mentioned in the journal. Fully indexed.
 

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Huling Genealogy: Descendants of James
and Margaret Huling of Newport Rhode Island
and Lewes, Delaware
by Esther L. Woodworth-Barnes, ed. by Jane Fletcher Fiske
Hard cover, 692 pp., 1984.
SPECIAL: $30.00

A classic source in R.I. genealogy, this book traces descendants of James and Margaret Huling through twelve generations up to the date of publication. Linked families, such as the Allens, Arnolds, Browns, Hopkins, Mattesons, Shermans, Smiths, and Spencers, are treated at length. Many early deeds and wills are transcribed. An appendix lists Hulings in other locations in colonial America and unplaced Rhode Island Hulings. Indexed.
 

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The Diary of Capt. Samuel Tillinghast
of Warwick, Rhode Island, 1757-1766
ed. by Cherry Fletcher Bamberg
Hard cover, 528 pp., 2000.
NM: $29.00   M: $25.00

An invaluable resource for eighteenth-century Warwick research, this book makes available for the first time a transcription of all three portions of Samuel Tillinghast's diary. A retired sea captain, Tillinghast noted the deaths of hundreds of people during the ten years of his diary, carefully recording the circumstances: Mary Clapp who died with her garters around her neck, the ferryman Nathaniel Hill who drowned off Long Point, old Granny Olney who fell off a lime cart and was run over, the Indian John Absalom who was hanged at Providence for murder, and many more. As many as possible of the people mentioned in the diary are identified in footnotes with substantial genealogical information. Extended introduction, general and name indexes, illustrated with photographs and maps.
 

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Gleanings from Rhode Island Town Records:
Providence Town Council Records, 1770-1788
(Special Bonus Issue 2006 of Rhode Island Roots)
by Linda L. Mathew
Soft cover, 152 pp.
SPECIAL: $12.00 postpaid.

Abstracts of genealogical information from Providence Town Council records during a critical period of Rhode Island history, this carefully indexed volume offers a wealth of detail on people hard to discover in other records. Limited quantities.
 

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Gleanings from Rhode Island Town Records:
Providence Town Council Records, 1789-1801
(Special Bonus Issue 2007 of Rhode Island Roots)
by Linda L. Mathew
Soft cover, 152 pp.
SPECIAL: $12.00 postpaid.

This issue continues the valuable extracts presented in the first Special Bonus Issue, with particular emphasis on the examination of people in Providence without a legal settlement.
 

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Gleanings from Rhode Island Town Records:
East Greenwich Town Council Records, 1734-1774
(Special Bonus Issue 2008 of Rhode Island Roots)
by Cherry Fletcher Bamberg, FASG
Soft cover, 152 pp.
SPECIAL: $12.00 postpaid.

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Gleanings from Rhode Island Town Records:
East Greenwich Town Council Records, 1775-1800
(Special Bonus Issue 2009 of Rhode Island Roots)
by Cherry Fletcher Bamberg, FASG
Soft cover, 152 pp.
SPECIAL: $12.00 postpaid.

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Gleanings from Rhode Island Town Records:
Early Coventry Records
(Special Bonus Issue 2010 of Rhode Island Roots)
by Catherine Hey
Soft cover, 152 pp.
SPECIAL: $12.00 postpaid.

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Gleanings from Rhode Island Town Records:
Scituate Town Council Records, 1731-1786
(Special Bonus Issue 2011 of Rhode Island Roots)
by Linda L. Mathew
Soft cover, 152 pp.
SPECIAL: $12.00 postpaid.

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Gleanings from Rhode Island Town Records:
Warwick Town Council Records, 1742-1780
(Special Bonus Issue 2012 of Rhode Island Roots)
by Cherry Fletcher Bamberg, FASG
Soft cover, 152 pp.
SPECIAL: $12.00 postpaid.
Coming in April/May 2012 -- Pre-Order Now

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